


the price we pay for love is knowing that we have everything to lose

by bffimagine



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Established Relationship, Family, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Kid Fic, M/M, Medical Jargon, Past Child Abuse, Trauma, yes they are married
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-01
Updated: 2020-12-01
Packaged: 2021-03-10 01:55:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,644
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27816451
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bffimagine/pseuds/bffimagine
Summary: On a Tuesday at 5:27PM, Sokka is teaching class as usual.Then his life ends.---“Sokka,” his sister’s voice sounded all wrong. Sokka frowned, alarm bells going off in his head.“Katara, what’s going on? Are you okay?”“I’m--oh, Sokka.” Another jagged inhale. Sokka’s heart was racing. “You--you need to come to the hospital right now.”Sokka’s big brother instincts were already tingling by the tremble in his baby sister’s voice, but her words shook him to his core.“Wai--what?”There was a strangled noise that sounded way too much like a sob for Sokka’s comfort. His knuckles were white around his phone.“Katara, breathe, okay? I’m… I’m on my way.” He moved to push the lecture hall door open, his mind scattered.A sniffle came through the line. “Just come as quick as you can. There’s--there’s been an accident.”Sokka’s heart stopped. His mouth was numb as it somehow formed the word, “What?”
Relationships: Sokka/Zuko (Avatar)
Comments: 38
Kudos: 314





	the price we pay for love is knowing that we have everything to lose

**Author's Note:**

> TW: fairly graphic depictions of medical trauma, grief.
> 
> Take care of yourselves!

Normally, Sokka wouldn’t answer his phone during class, but something felt… _different_ , today. It was 5:27PM on a Tuesday and he was almost halfway through his lecture on the application of the law of conservation of energy on various lever mechanisms when his phone buzzed in his pocket. That in itself was somewhat unusual, as he usually left his phone in his shoulder bag or his jacket while he was teaching, but for whatever reason, he must’ve forgotten.

Maybe it was just this constellation of _out of the ordinary_ that led him to actually pausing mid-sentence, a few confused murmurs cresting across the sea of students filling the lecture hall. His brows furrowed as he reached into his pocket.

“Sorry about this, everyone, I seem to have left my phone in my pocket,” he said apologetically.

“No probs, Dr. Sokka!”

Sokka smiled despite himself. “Uh, thanks, Jung.”

The next in the string of unusual events was that Sokka actually looked at his screen as he slid his fingertip over the “ignore” button and saw that the call was from Katara. It made him pause, finger still half-swiped across the screen as the phone continued to vibrate urgently in his hand.

Katara knew his schedule well enough to know he was teaching right now; why would she call? Did she butt-dial him or something?

But no, that didn’t sound like his sister. Most of the time she would just show up to pick him up from work or pop by his house if she wanted to talk; she reserved her phone for chasing after her often wayward husband (“Aang, sweetie, if you get distracted by _every_ dog you see on the way home we will never eat dinner and Bumi is _not a patient kid_ …”) and for giving their dad an earful about whatever it was that he was supposed to have done three days ago (“Seriously, Dad! You’re not _that_ old yet--no, don’t give me that! I know you’ve got other things to--ugh, nevermind, I’ll just send the flowers to Gran-gran and sign it from all of us.”). Otherwise, she didn’t really see the point in using it when her brother lived so closeby.

He narrowed his eyes. Wasn’t Katara on shift today, anyway?

Something in his gut compelled him to pick up.

“Guys, take 5. I think I should take this.”

There was a collective whoop from his class that made Sokka roll his eyes good-naturedly. He slipped out the double doors of the lecture hall and pressed his back against the wall to answer the call.

“Katara? What’s up? Is everything okay?”

There was a sharp intake of breath on the other end.

“ _Sokka_ ,” his sister’s voice sounded all wrong. Sokka frowned, alarm bells going off in his head.

“Katara, what’s going on? Are you okay?”

“I’m--oh, _Sokka_.” Another jagged inhale. Sokka’s heart was racing. “You--you need to come to the hospital right now.”

Sokka’s big brother instincts were already tingling by the tremble in his baby sister’s voice, but her words shook him to his core.

“Wai--what?”

There was a strangled noise that sounded way too much like a sob for Sokka’s comfort. His knuckles were white around his phone.

“Katara, breathe, okay? I’m… I’m on my way.” He moved to push the lecture hall door open, his mind scattered.

A sniffle came through the line. “Just come as quick as you can. There’s--there’s been an accident.”

Sokka’s heart stopped. His mouth was numb as it somehow formed the word, “What?”

“I’ll explain more when you’re here. Just… hurry. I have to--I have to get back.”

“Okay,” Sokka said, even though it was the _exact opposite_ of how he was feeling. He didn’t even really register stumbling back into his classroom, his students’ faces an unrecognizable blur as he stuttered out some apology or excuse or _something_ , maybe even just a garbled mess of incoherent words, grabbed his jacket and his keys (and his bag, as an afterthought), trying his damndest not to vomit on his mad dash out to his car.

He couldn’t focus on anything other than the word ‘accident’ playing on some demented loop in his brain until the inside of his skull felt too tight, pressing out any of the sounds as he probably broke a bunch of road traffic laws on the way to the hospital. Miraculously, he didn’t end up in an accident on his own as he tore into the parking lot and spilled out of his car. His legs almost gave out beneath him when his feet hit the asphalt, but through sheer force of will he ran into the emergency department, panic settling in the pit of his gut and making him go cold to his core.

“I need to find Katara,” he said to the first person he saw behind a plexiglass window. The bewildered nurse (or doctor or _whoever they were_ ) pointed at the main ED entrance with wide eyes. He could imagine the mess he must’ve been, heart thrashing wildly against his breastbone as if trying to escape its fleshy cage.

He crashed through the doors without feeling the impact of the people whose shoulders he bumped on his way in.

“Katara!”

There were so many lights and sounds and faces around him, but none of them were familiar. He looked frantically from side to side, panic making him short-sighted and he couldn’t pull in a breath past his spasming throat.

“Katara! Please, I need to find--”

“ _Sokka!_ ”

His head snapped around to the sound of his name, his vision narrowing to the pinpoint of his sister’s face, paler than he’d ever seen her. He tore across the hallway and pulled her into his arms, heedless of the other voices shouting after him.

“Are you okay? Spirits, Katara, I was so scared--”

“I’m fine, Sokka,” Katara said, voice steadier than it had been on the phone but hands shaking violently despite being clenched vice-like in the fabric of Sokka’s jacket.

“But you said there was an accident, and you sounded so--”

“There _was_ an accident, Sokka.” Katara pulled away from his embrace, and her eyes were glassy, cheeks shiny with tear-tracks that lost the battle against the gravity of her grief.

“What do you--oh, _Tui and La_ ,” he breathed. “Zuzu?” he asked, praying to every god that existed that it wasn’t true.

Katara’s face shattered, and Sokka felt his heart shatter in kind. She crumbled forward into his chest, and only then did Sokka realize that his sister’s scrubs were splattered with blood. He felt all the colour drain from his face and abruptly felt dizzy; the two of them slowly ended up clinging to each other on the floor.

“I’m… I’m _so sorry_ , Sokka,” she sobbed into his neck. Sokka just tightened his hold around her dumbly, unable to speak or think anything but _no no no no no no no_ …

“There… there was an _accident_ ,” Katara repeated, like the words were swirling around in her head just as much as they were in Sokka’s.

“Where… can I--?”

To be honest, Sokka wasn’t sure if he actually wanted to follow when Katara nodded gravely, wiping her face with the backs of her wrists and straightening up, suddenly looking like his formidable, unbreakable sister, but the way her lips trembled as she took a deep breath betrayed just how _breakable_ she was underneath all her strength and her determination.

Sokka followed her like a spectre, haunted and hollowed out like he’d been eviscerated. _There had been an accident_ . (“I’m so _sorry,_ Sokka.”) She led him into a room where a cacophony of beeping monitors and what seemed like thousands of voices hit him like a wall.

“--we need to get that bolus in, _stat!_ ”

“--and prioritize the airway--”

“--right pupil is _blown_ , where’s the hypertonic saline?!”

“--unresponsive, is CT ready for us yet--”

“--with neurosurgery, we need to get--”

There were people in scrubs and gowns flitting around the room in a macabre ballet, movements steady in a way that Sokka felt like his world would never be again.

His eyes caught on the bow of a man’s back curled into the side of the gurney, and if his mind was catching things in stop-motion before, that was what made it grind to a jarring halt.

“Zu--Zuko?”

He all but fell into the room, and the hospital staff around him parted as if choreographed to do so, allowing him to pass through untouched, as if they knew that he was just a touch, a word away from turning to ash.

There was a barely audible hitch of breath over all the noise in the room that was suddenly drowned out to nothing but pressure behind Sokka’s eardrums. His favourite shade of gold flickered up to his face, looking dull and lost and so unfamiliar, rimmed with red and glossed over with tears.

He pulled his husband toward him by the back of his neck, pressing their foreheads together and trying desperately to _breathe_ . Zuko was strung so tight that Sokka could feel it in the cords of muscle beneath his palm, shaking so hard that Sokka’s whole body shook with him (or maybe they were both just _shaking, shaking, shaking_ ).

“They have to take her soon,” Zuko whispered, his voice impossibly even despite his body trying to fall apart in Sokka’s grasp. “I’m--I couldn’t--I’m so _sorry_ , Sokka.”

(“I’m so _sorry_ ,” Katara’s voice echoed in Sokka’s head. He clenched his jaw against the punch of agony that shot straight through his chest and into his spine, cleaving down to his bones like a hatchet.)

“Zuko, baby, you have to breathe for me, okay? Can you do that?”

Zuko’s lips were bloodless white, and Sokka watched him press them together as he tried to pull a breath in through his nose as if learning to do so for the very first time. 

“This is my fault,” Zuko said, fingers spasming around the tiny hand clutched in his. Sokka couldn’t look, he _couldn’t_ , he had to keep it together for Zuko, for his family, for his _baby girl_ \--

“No, honey, this isn’t your fault,” Sokka said, feeling lightheaded with disbelief, with denial, with whatever it was that had him clinging to the hope that this _just wasn’t happening_. “I’m… I love you, okay? I love you. She’s gonna be--”

He choked on the words. _She’s gonna be okay_ , he wanted to say, but he couldn’t. He knew if he was wrong, if she _wasn’t_ okay but he said she would be… he knew Zuko wouldn’t survive it, and he wasn’t sure he could, either.

“I’m here now,” he said instead, then repeated it over and over into his husband’s hair like it would wake him up from this horrible nightmare; he’d be able to brush a kiss over Zuko’s forehead, feather-light so as not to wake his extremely light sleeper of a spouse, and quietly slip into their daughter’s bedroom just to watch Izumi sleep peacefully for a few minutes, only to card a hand through her hair and pray he could keep her safe and happy forever. Eventually, Zuko would come looking for him, since the man could sense Sokka’s bittersweet reverie even from the depths of his unconscious, and he would silently sit next to him on the floor and lean into his side, a fit so perfect it would make Sokka want to cry (and if he had to discreetly wipe away a tear or two, Zuko wouldn’t hold it against him).

“Sir?”

Sokka’s mind slammed back into the present, all the sounds and lights and voices in the room filtering into his brain in layers until they were suffocating.

He looked up at a man in scrubs with a blank expression on his face (or maybe Sokka just couldn’t see anything past the devastating hole in his chest sucking all the air out of him)--

“I’m sorry sir, but we have to take your daughter to the CT scanner immediately.”

Sokka nodded, not really knowing if there was anything else he could do. He cupped Zuko’s unscarred cheek in one hand and gently tilted his face up to his own, his other hand trailing down Zuko’s to gently squeeze around the unwavering grip his husband had on Izumi’s.

“You gotta let them take care of her, baby,” he said gently, forcing strength he didn’t feel into his voice. Zuko’s eyes were unseeing and unfocused as he nodded, a short, jerky movement of his head. He pulled Izumi’s hand to his lips with impossible tenderness, dropping a kiss to her knuckles before he carefully, so carefully brought it back to her side. His fingers unfurled around Izumi’s limp little hand, and Sokka’s already broken heart bled at the sight.

Finally, _finally,_ he dared to look at the small form on the bed. She looked so tiny and fragile, eyes open but staring blankly ahead at nothing, pupils uneven and body unnaturally slack. There was a tube in her mouth and her chest rose and fell with mechanical, measured breaths. Tubes and wires were sticking out of and onto her in all directions, her little body caught in a deadly web with her life precariously hanging in the balance. Her hair was crusted with blood at her left temple, a bruise blossoming on her forehead, creeping purple-blue tendrils into her hair as if mocking the practiced motions of Sokka’s fingers as he braided it every day.

(“I don’t wanna go to school,” Izumi had whined that morning. Her bottom lip jutted out in a pout so dramatic Sokka couldn’t help but chuckle. He knew _exactly_ where--or, rather, _from whom_ \--she had inherited her flair for the dramatic, and he was currently sitting across from Izumi, hiding his own smile behind the rim of his tea cup with his sole eyebrow quirked up as he watched the exchange and _offered absolutely no help_.

Sokka scooped his five-year-old into a near-crushing hug, squishing her against his chest while he stuck his tongue out at his husband behind his daughter’s back.

“Come now, Zuzu, Baba is going to pick you up after school today so you can visit Auntie Azula. You _love_ visiting Auntie Azula, right?”

Izumi crossed her arms with a theatrically exaggerated ‘ _hmph!_ ’

“But _you’re_ not coming with us to see Auntie Azula, and I want to spend time with _you!_ ”

Sokka’s dad-heart turned to mush at his little girl’s frowny face, but he knew he had to be an actual parent and get her to school. His spouse staunchly refused to help, his eyebrow just climbed a bit higher at Sokka’s pleading look (which, granted, probably looked _exactly like Izumi’s_ , what were the chances of _that_?).

“Oh, sweetheart, you know that all I wanna do _ever_ is spend time with my best girl, right?”

Izumi’s eyes brightened but she did her damndest to keep her brows furrowed, even as a hopeful grin started to bloom across her face.

“Really?” she said, losing the battle with said eyebrows and looking so excited that Sokka couldn’t resist pulling her in and smothering her little face in tiny butterfly kisses.

She shrieked and giggled as Sokka blew raspberries on her tummy instead of being responsible and getting her ready for school. Of course, before either of them could make themselves late, Zuko coaxed them apart with his soft voice and a few little kisses of his own to their daughter’s hairline. (He may have been the stickler for punctuality but he was also the one who tucked a mini cinnamon raisin bagel with peanut butter in Izumi’s little fist and got her to eat it while Sokka weaved her hair into a braid crown, extra special for her visit with Azula, and handed them both their bags and their lunches as Sokka strapped Izumi into her car seat, even though it was technically _Sokka’s_ responsibility to make breakfast and pack lunch that day.)

“Remember, Izumi, I’m coming to pick you up right after school. No dilly-dallying, okay?”

(People who didn’t know Zuko, who just saw his trauma in the gnarled skin that distorted the left side of his face, or the intimidating set of his shoulders, or the authority in the line of his spine… they’d probably never imagine the man to use a word like _dilly-dallying_ . Sokka had _loved_ it when it was Zuko’s turn to go to school with Izumi on career day and the parents all shrank away from him at first glance but then the man led in an armful of puppies and demonstrated, with a plastic play-set, how pets received their shots at his veterinary clinic and the kids went gleefully _berserk_ \--)

Izumi was already halfway to the school doors before she paused, swiveled around, and ran back to hug Sokka around the knees.

“I love you, Daddy,” she said into his pant leg. Sokka grinned and crouched to pull her into a proper hug, cradling her head against his shoulder.

“I love you too, Zuzu.” He pulled back and ‘boop’-ed her on the nose before ushering her toward the door. He saw her turn back one more time to wave at him before she disappeared into the school.)

Almost as soon as Zuko released Izumi’s hand, the emergency team flew into action and started wheeling her toward the door. Zuko shot to his feet like a man possessed, only half a step behind the stretcher, but Katara’s arm caught him by the shoulder.

“I’m sorry,” she said (and Sokka couldn’t hear anything but _I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry_ ). She coaxed Zuko back into the room and nudged him toward a chair that Sokka hadn’t even realized was there. The room was suddenly empty of movement and sound, and the void seemed to swallow whatever it was that had kept Zuko on his feet (probably a combination of _love and adrenaline and obstinance_ , Sokka thought absently amidst the grief swimming in every crevice of his brain). He slumped heavily in the chair, his head in his hands. Sokka knelt at his feet and mindlessly swept his husband’s long hair over his shoulder, rubbing over the knobs of his spine just to reassure himself that Zuko was actually here.

“What… what happened?” Sokka asked, directing the question to his sister since his husband wasn’t in any state to answer.

Katara glanced at the defeated curve of Zuko’s back over his knees before her soft blue eyes flickered back to Sokka’s face.

“They were hit by some asshole that ran a red light, driving about 80 kilometres over the speed limit,” she bit out harshly, voice quiet but expression steely. Zuko’s breathing stuttered and paused for a second and Sokka increased the pressure of his hand on his husband’s back.

“I didn’t see him coming, I swear,” Zuko said brokenly through the gaps between his fingers. “I’m so sorry, Sokka. I’m so--I’m sorry.”

Sokka bit his lip, tasting blood as he stood to pull Zuko toward him. The other man’s arms circled his waist as he pressed his face into Sokka’s stomach, the taller man’s shirt quickly soaking through with tears as Zuko finally dissolved into messy sobbing. His hands fisted in Sokka’s jacket.

Sokka stroked Zuko’s hair, silky and jet black and so like their daughter’s it felt like his soul was shredding with every pass of his hand over his husband’s head, but it was also grounding and Sokka needed that. He needed to stay right here, right where he could hold Zuko and thank every greater power that at least he had his husband with him.

He was so lost in his thoughts that it could’ve been minutes or hours that he spent stooped over his husband, whispering wordless comfort and focused on the repetition of his hand thoroughly ruining Zuko’s messy bun. His reverie was finally broken when Katara’s alarmed voice rang out.

His mind was so muddled in grief and disbelief and hoping against hope that somehow their daughter would be _okay_ that he didn’t even catch what Katara said, just felt the barb of urgency in her voice catch under his skin. He finally looked down and realised he was essentially holding Zuko’s head up, and the other man’s arms had fallen to his sides.

“Zuko?” he murmured, moving his hands to hold his husband’s face between them as he bent down to peer at his face. Katara was already springing into action, calling out at someone outside the door and shouting instructions and orders. In a flurry of _movement sound chaos_ it was like Sokka’s worst nightmare was replaying itself all over again, except this time he watched in detached horror as a nurse pried his hands off of Zuko and he stood by in shock as they started hooking up monitors and _wires and tubes_ to what remained of his family. Katara was no longer just his sister in the room but possibly Zuko’s _lifeline_ as she barked out orders and vital signs and things that Sokka wasn’t able to filter through the numb haze that had filled the space between his ears. It was as if his body and mind had reached their threshold for agony and he was left as a spectator to watch the shambles of his life get razed to the ground, leaving nothing in their wake.

“Fuck,” he heard Katara curse, and some part of him might’ve found it amusing that she would do something so uncharacteristic and seemingly unprofessional at work. His eyes surveyed the others in the room--it seemed like they all shared the sentiment as they looked at the screen with the squiggly lines in different colours, feebly _beep-beep_ \- _beep_ ing at a comically slow pace compared to how fast everyone was rushing to do _all the things_.

“What’s happening?”

He felt the words in his mouth but he didn’t remember thinking them. Katara looked at him, then looked at some other person in the room, and next thing Sokka knew Katara had him sitting in the same chair Zuko had collapsed in just moments ago.

“I need you to listen to me, Sokka,” she said, very quiet but very firm. Sokka found himself nodding almost on reflex.

“Zuko is going into surgery _right now_ ,” she said, enunciating each word sharply as if that might pierce the heavy fog in Sokka’s brain. He nodded again, but didn’t really process anything other than the wetness he could see pooling along his sister’s lower lashes. She probably said something else, but everything blurred out for him.

“I knew we should’ve checked him out sooner,” Katara muttered, not so much to Sokka this time, but rather to herself. “EMS told us he refused to get checked out at the scene.” She finally met Sokka’s eyes again, and Sokka had no idea what she saw in his face but whatever it was, it made something change in her expression that he was too far gone to interpret.

“You know, he somehow clawed himself out of the wreck of the car to get to Izumi. He got her out by the time the ambulance arrived and handed her to the first paramedic he saw and _demanded_ they get her to the hospital immediately. Scared the absolute shit out of them.”

Katara chuckled, but there was no humour in the sound. She seemed to deflate with every word she said.

“You have an absolute _idiot_ for a husband,” she said. “They almost called a Code White on him because he wouldn’t let them register him. He wouldn’t let go of Izumi so we just, I mean, I was like, ‘just leave it’. He stayed by her side the whole time, just to tell her he was with her, you know?”

She finally reached out and pressed her hands to either side of Sokka’s face. The sensation brought him back into his own body, but it also made him realise how much everything _hurt_. His eyes blurred with the long overdue tears as Katara’s voice broke.

“He’s such a fucking idiot!” she exclaimed, half-laughing and half-sobbing. Sokka glanced past her shoulder and belatedly noticed that they were, once again, alone.

“Where--?”

“Surgery,” Katara answered, very gently and very patiently, although she had probably told him before but Sokka just couldn’t get a grasp on _anything_ . Reality was real slippery at the moment and no matter what he did everything but the Izumi’s unequal, unseeing eyes and the weight of Zuko’s body curled lifelessly into his own were the only things he couldn’t _stop_ seeing or feeling or hating or dreading.

Time became stretched and warped in a way that Sokka could’ve spent his entire career studying but would never be able to explain with physics, at least not on Earth. He felt like only seconds had passed since Katara finally got him to his feet, but it seemed like both Zuko and Izumi remained in surgery for years. At some point, he noticed that there was blood on his thigh; he really had no idea where it came from, but he knew it was either his husband’s or his daughter’s and it immediately brought him to his knees, vomiting violently into a garbage can in the surgical waiting room as other families looked at him with a mixture of shock and pity. Someone handed him a styrofoam cup of water and he thanked them but didn’t end up drinking it, just staring at the ripples on the liquid’s surface as he tried and failed to keep his hands steady. Katara sat with him the whole time, her jacket thrown on haphazardly over her scrubs. Sokka might have asked her if she left her shift early, but he couldn’t recall her answer and it might’ve just been a figment of his imagination. Aang eventually appeared out of nowhere (“Your dad is watching Bumi and Kya,” Aang repeated for the umpteenth time, when Sokka asked him _again_ what he was doing there), convincing Katara to go home to shower and eat something and see their kids before they could switch places again.

(“Don’t worry, we’ve already called Toph.” “Yes, your dad knows.” “It’s okay, we’ve got it covered.”

Sokka heard the words wash over him, but nothing soaked through. His shirt was still wet from Zuko’s tears and his pants still had a bloodstain on them but nothing was soaking through where it _mattered_ \--)

After some indeterminate amount of time, someone finally called for him. His head snapped up and he was almost dizzy with the motion, but it turned out it wasn’t dizziness, he was just already on his feet and probably too close to the surgeon for comfort but they _had_ to see how desperate he was, right? How much he needed them to be okay. How much he loved them. How much he wished it was _him_ , not _them_ , and how he’d give anything to switch places so they’d be alright--

“...sorry,” the surgeon said, as Sokka’s head finally caught up with whatever it was that was happening. He turned to his dad, who looked like he’d aged a decade since he’d last seen him (which was just this past weekend, they’d gone for brunch and taken Zuzu to the park with Bumi and Kya and she got _so mad_ that Bumi didn’t want her to play with his friends and Kya eventually managed to distract her with one of her new toys and the two of them eventually started having such a grand time that Bumi came running back, asking if _he could play, too_ , and when the girls predictably said, in no uncertain terms, _NO_ , it was Hakoda that settled his grandson on his knee and explained that it was important to treat others the way he wanted to be treated).

“Sorry?” Sokka blurted out, and even _he_ wasn’t sure if it was meant to be a question or if he was just repeating what he managed to hear.

The surgeon gave him a sympathetic look that Sokka absolutely _hated_ and a childish part of him wanted to punch it off the woman’s face. A split-second later, he was horrified at his own thoughts, but tried his best to push it all down with the rapidly-overwhelming urge to vomit again, because what the fuck was happening and _were they going to be okay_?

“Sir, I said that your daughter is out of surgery and she is in the pediatric intensive care unit. You can see her once they get her settled in. But at this point, we can’t tell what she’ll be like when she wakes up. I’m sorry.”

“...sorry,” Sokka echoed involuntarily, and the surgeon’s features twisted in second-hand grief. She put a hand on Sokka’s shoulder.

“We got her into the operating room really quickly,” she explained, as if Sokka understood what that meant. All he knew was that his baby girl was fighting for her life and she _still might not make it_. “She was badly hurt, but we were able to bring down the pressure in her head from the injury. We don’t know what that will mean for her just yet, but we’ll watch her very closely.”

Sokka nodded because he just didn’t have anything left. His father asked the surgeon some more questions, but none of them made it through to him. He stood there like a forgotten puppet left hanging by a thread, upright as an afterthought.

As the first surgeon left, another one stepped into her place. This surgeon was a little taller but wore the same stricken expression as the previous one, and Sokka wondered what his own expression must look like to make them look that way.

“Your husband survived the surgery,” the surgeon said, and the concrete realization that he had come _so close_ to losing Zuko stabbed into Sokka’s consciousness, dragging him to the surface on a knife’s edge to losing his mind. “He had significant internal injuries and lost a considerable amount of blood, but we are hopeful that he may recover.”

“When… when can I see him?”

“He will be transferred to the ICU at Omashu Memorial Hospital,” the surgeon explained.

“Why is he being moved to another hospital?” Hakoda asked immediately. Sokka felt a rush of gratitude toward his father, because he couldn’t seem to force any words past the tight clench of his jaw, and he was scared that if he loosened it, even a little, he wouldn’t be able to bite back the torrent of grief and fear he was drowning in.

“I’m sorry, sir, but unfortunately our ICU here doesn’t have sufficient resources to--”

“Their daughter is here. You can’t just separate them, my son, he--there has to be a way. You must be able to do _something_! Please, please don’t do this.”

Thankfully (for Sokka, not for this poor surgeon that was about to have his ass handed to him in a very unpleasant way), Katara’s furious voice preceded her.

“Ren, you _cannot_ be serious. Omashu Memorial doesn’t have anything there that we don’t. _We_ are the level 1 trauma center!”

The surgeon looked immediately uncomfortable, but stood his ground. “ _Katara_ , I understand that this is your family, but it is extremely unprofessional to--”

“What’s _unprofessional_ ,” Katara seethed, “is approving a transfer for _census issues_ when there are clear medical and social indications to admit the patient _here_ \--”

“Katara, I--”

“--and I will discuss this with the critical care department head myself if I have to--”

“--but--”

“--so I certainly _hope_ you plan on calling the ICU charge _right now_ to tell them you made an _egregious error in judgement_ before I do, because if I make that call, spirits help me, I will be following that up with a call to the _college_!”

The surgeon gave an aborted nod before bowing to Sokka and Hakoda awkwardly and scampering off. Katara, still fuming, flung her still-wet braid over her shoulder. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, then curled her fingers around Sokka’s elbow.

“Come on, let’s go see Zuko.”

Sokka’s heart was beating absurdly fast considering that it felt like it took them forever to get to Zuko’s room. It was as if Sokka waded through jelly the whole time, his whole body too heavy and stiff but his guts clenching in dread. Right before they walked into the room, Katara grabbed both his shoulders and forced him to meet her eyes.

“I am warning you now, he will be in really bad shape,” she said earnestly. He nodded. He had been doing a lot of nodding in the past eternity that had elapsed since he kissed his daughter goodbye after dropping her off at school and ended up in this terrible, bizarre reality where he sat on the brink of losing everything he loved most.

When he followed her into the room, all the air turned to lead in his lungs. Zuko was whiter than the sheets he was lying on, and he was also connected to a breathing tube and a beeping monitor and so many tubes and wires that clearly someone was playing some cruel joke, making him look so fragile and so similar to their daughter at the absolute _worst_ moment of Sokka’s life.

He sank into the chair at the bedside, gathering one of Zuko’s hands in his and running his fingertips along the fine bones of his husband’s wrist and knuckles, tracing the lines and dips like a love letter he should’ve sent every day he had him, healthy and whole and beautiful and _his_.

“I’m here now,” he whispered into Zuko’s palm, lips brushing against too-cold skin. Zuko ran hot, most of the time; he was the one kicking off the blankets while they slept. Here, the blankets were stiff and neatly tucked around him, making Zuko look like a doll rather than a person, rather than his _husband_ who usually gave him shit for tucking his cold feet between his thighs but never actually moved away, who would complain that Sokka drank too much coffee but also knew exactly the way Sokka liked it, who loved him and loved their daughter so wholly that his love was terrifying in its intensity.

For the second time in the eternity that stretched between _just another Tuesday_ and _the end of the world as he knew it_ , Sokka broke down into ugly, heaving sobs as his grief overflowed, teardrops leaving salty prayers on Zuko’s sheets. 

_Please, please get them through this_ . _Please let them be okay. I’ll do anything, I swear. Please._

\-----

Katara and Aang managed to wrestle him into their car so they could get him to shower, change, and eat. Every day had him terrified it would be the last; that he would go home and come back and they would be _gone_. It was hard for his family to get him to leave Izumi or Zuko’s bedside, probably just as hard as it was for him to leave one to see the other.

Miraculously, Izumi woke up on the third day. Sokka had never before experienced such profound gratitude; for whoever and whatever it was that helped his daughter stay with him, he was so, so grateful.

“Daddy?” she said, and Sokka was immediately on his feet, hovering over her with tears of joy brimming in his eyes.

“Did Auntie ‘Zula forget? Are we having a sleepover?”

Sokka gently brushed his knuckles against Izumi’s cheeks. “No, baby, she didn’t forget. And you’re… I guess you are kind of having a sleepover.”

“Oh. Okay.”

She drifted off again, which the doctors told him was normal. To be expected. His chest was so full of hope that it felt tight. Katara explained that Izumi was healing really well, but that there would likely be some issues later. She still wasn’t moving around much so it was hard to tell what kinds of issues she might have, but she was talking, so that was a good sign, too.

It was the first thing he told Zuko about, even though his husband had yet to wake up. He hoped that maybe knowing that Izumi was doing better would pull Zuko back from wherever he was, but Katara kept reminding him to be patient. Zuko had a lot of healing to do, too. It wasn’t clear when he’d wake up; Katara always skirted around it, but Sokka could feel the unspoken _if_ that prickled under his skin.

On the fifth day, Zuko was finally warm. After his hand and cheek being cool under Sokka’s touch, the return of some semblance of normalcy was a welcome change. Sokka’s joy quickly plummeted to despair, however, when he realised it was because Zuko had spiked a fever; the doctors said it _might not be a cause for concern yet_ , but Sokka had been through too much over the last week to let himself feel optimistic.

On the sixth day, Izumi was able to sit up in bed. She was doing much, much better than anyone expected. Sokka’s heart still hurt when his fingers grazed the massive scar on her head with the uneven areas of shaven hair, but Izumi asked him to take a picture when her bandages were changed that morning.

“Huh,” she had said with the kind of nonchalance that only a five-year-old could possess. “Baba and I are kinda matching.”

The next day, Zuko woke up. But he didn’t really wake up so much as jolt into semi-consciousness, thrashing and pulling at his tubes and wires and screaming himself hoarse about _burning_ . The panic and betrayal in his face when Sokka tried to hold his hands down, tried to keep him from hurting himself--it followed Sokka to sleep that night, along with Zuko’s weakening sobs of, “ _Please, Father, no! I’m sorry, please, don’t… I’m sorry! I’m sorry, I’m so sorry_ ” as the nurses finally sedated him. His fever was continuing to escalate, and Sokka once again found himself unable to escape the crushing weight of fear whenever he had to leave Zuko’s side.

( _I’m sorry! I’m sorry, I’m so sorry_ Sokka…)

Suki organized a rotation of support amongst their friends once Aang and Katara told her what had happened. Of course, Azula pretty much ignored whatever anyone else was doing and tried to spend almost every moment she could with Zuko.

(“It’s only fair,” she said dismissively. “He came to see me every day when I was admitted. The whole year. And then again when I relapsed.”

Ty Lee and Mai actually adhered to Suki’s schedule. Most of the time. Sometimes they’d come just to pick Azula up, make sure she continued to take her meds on time, and bring her a change of clothes.

Sokka found himself immensely grateful for the company, and to have someone that would be with Izumi while he was with Zuko and vice versa.)

Uncle, for all his wisdom and insight, went against all their advice and flew in on the first flight he could catch from Ba Sing Se. He just sort of waltzed in one day, casual as you please, as if he hadn’t just landed from a nine-hour red-eye the night before. Sokka was startled awake by the old man’s humming, and a cup of tea was pressed into his hands before he could even form a greeting.

“Hello, nephew,” Iroh greeted serenely, inhaling the steam from his own cup of tea. Sokka blinked, bewildered.

“I thought we--”

“The crane does not wait for the fish; if it did, it would go hungry.”

Sokka chose to not say anything after that, and he and Iroh sat in silence as they watched Zuko sleep. He was still feverish but it seemed like the antibiotics were finally working, and the fevers seemed shorter-lived and further apart.

Azula came in a few minutes later, presumably to switch places with Sokka, but when he tried to stand she pushed him back into his seat by a (deceptively strong) hand on his shoulder.

Then, she disappeared out the door for a moment, coming back in pushing a wheelchair that absolutely dwarfed his daughter.

“Daddy!” she squealed excitedly, then noticed the other occupant in the room. “Uncle!”

Sokka tried not to be jealous as Izumi made grabby-hands at Iroh to give him a hug first. Azula eventually helped Izumi into his lap and it was then that he realised how much it put his heart at ease to have his family together in the same room again.

“Baba is sleeping late,” Izumi stage-whispered. “He doesn’t… he doesn’t like to--you know what he does when Daddy wants to sleep late?” She looked between Iroh and Azula, like she was about to share some ground-breaking secret. “He makes… he makes… he takes all the blankets off--all of the blankets! And Daddy always says five more minutes but if he sleeps Baba says its more than five minutes but Daddy says five more minutes because five more minutes but Baba says it’s not five minutes, not ever.”

Iroh laughed heartily, absolutely charmed, and Sokka gave his daughter a little squeeze. He didn’t know he could love someone as much as he loved Izumi, but he knew he was incredibly lucky that she was with him, sitting in his lap and telling her stories.

“So Baba should wake up.”

Sokka smiled thinly at her. “Baba is still working on getting better so--”

“‘Zumi?”

Every pair of eyes in the room snapped to Zuko, who blinked at them blearily. He tried to rub at his eyes and made a face at his intravenous lines.

“What’s… Sokka?”

It was the most lucid Sokka had seen him, and he couldn’t help the tears that sprang to his eyes.

“Morning, sunshine,” he said, leaning in to press a kiss to Zuko’s temple. The elder tried to sit up in the bed and made a surprised sound when Azula (gently) shoved him back down.

“None of that, now, Zuzu,” she admonished in a way that should’ve sounded harsh but came out fond instead.

“None of what?” Izumi piped up, and Zuko’s eyes immediately locked onto her. His face when through a gamut of emotions before finally crumpling into tears, which made Izumi cry out in alarm.

“Daddy! Daddy, Baba’s crying! Daddy--DADDY! Daddy why are you crying? Why are you sad?”

Iroh chuckled wetly and pulled Izumi into his arms. “They’re not sad, Izumi. Crying just happens when you feel too much to keep it inside--sometimes you cry because there is much sadness, but also sometimes when there is much joy.”

Izumi wrinkled her nose in thought, making a face so Zuko-like that Iroh laughed.

“Whatever you say, Uncle,” she said. Sokka coughed on a laugh as well and gratefully let Iroh arrange her between her fathers. Azula sat at the foot of the bed with her arms crossed, probably trying to pull off aloof but still looking like a worried mother hen.

“You’ve got to be careful with your Baba, Izumi, he’s a bit _delicate_ right now--”

Zuko, ignoring his sister completely, pulled his daughter into his lap. She automatically wound her arms around his neck and settled into his shoulder, letting her eyes drift shut in contentment.

Sokka nearly had a conniption, immediately fussing about Zuko’s laparotomy incision. Azula was fussing, in her own way, which sounded much more like berating but her brother knew the difference.

“I’m so happy you’re okay,” Zuko murmured into Izumi’s hair, mindful of her own new scar. Sokka could read the sorrow and the guilt in the taut line of Zuko’s shoulders, and he leaned over to press a kiss to their now-sleeping daughter’s cheek.

“She said, ‘Now Baba and I kinda match’,” Sokka relayed, gesturing toward said scar. Zuko’s good eye went very wide and then very soft.

“Yeah,” he whispered, equal parts sad and wistful. “Our fathers both messed us up.”

Sokka frowned but it was Azula who snapped, “Don’t you _dare_ , Zuzu.”

Zuko let his fingers comb through the downy hairs at the base of Izumi’s neck, careful not to touch her head where it was still misshapen under the scar from the piece of bone that had still not been replaced.

“I know this doesn’t happen often, but I completely agree with Azula.” Sokka squeezed Zuko’s knee firmly.

A tense moment passed before Iroh finally broke the silence.

“You would do well to remember that you are not your father,” the elderly man said. Sokka watched Zuko hang on his every word. “His sins are not yours to bear.”

“Thank you, Uncle,” Zuko said so quietly that it was almost inaudible.

Iroh’s face brightened considerably and he clapped his hands together; fortunately, Izumi took more after Sokka in terms of sleeping habits and didn’t even flinch.

“I’d say that we should celebrate with a new blend I’ve been working on,” he said cheerfully. “To herald a speedy recovery for both of you.”

Sokka held Zuko’s hand as Iroh bustled about, pulling a kettle out of his bag (which probably held little other than said kettle, his tea set, and a few canisters of tea leaves). Azula perched regally in the chair on the other side of Zuko’s bed.

Aang and Katara arrived shortly after the water boiled, and greeted Iroh warmly.

It had been the longest, most terrible week of Sokka’s life, but somehow there he was, his family still blessedly intact and surrounded by love and support. He had no idea what he had done to deserve this--this precious second chance--but as he watched Zuko valiantly fight sleep until he was slumped back on the pillows with Izumi still drooling on his chest, he finally felt like he could breathe.

“Sokka, would you like some tea?”

“No, thanks, Uncle. I’ve got everything I need.”

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah so... this is some vent-writing at its ugliest. Just... throwing shit at poor Sokka because I'm supposed to be a healthy adult that has had some horrible trauma cases over the past few weeks and needed an outlet for it.
> 
> If anyone's wondering, the outcomes in this fic are within the realm of possibility, especially since I was pretty hand-wavey about all the actual details. I needed the happy ending just as much as Sokka did.


End file.
